'Not again hear thy half-murmurs--I am lost!--never, never more. 'I am wrecked on seas of air, hurled to my death in a vessel of flame! 'Hither, sisters! Father, save me! Hither, succour me, Cypria!' Now a wail of men to Zeus rang: from Olympus the Thunderer Saw the rage of the havoc wide-mouthed, the bright car superimpending Over Asia, Africa, low down; ruin flaming over the vales; Light disastrous rising savage out of smoke inveterately; Beast-black, the conflagration like a menacing shadow move With voracious roaring southward, where aslant, insufferable, The bright steeds careered their parched way down an arc of the firmament. For the day grew like to thick night, and the orb was its beacon-fire, And from hill to hill of darkness burst the day's apparition forth. Lo, a wrestler, not a God, stood in the chariot ever lowering: Lo, the shape of one who raced there to outstrip the legitimate hours: Lo, the ravish'd beams of Phoebus dragg'd in shame at the chariot-wheels: Light of days of happy pipings by the mead-singing rivulets! Lo, lo, increasing lustre, torrid breath to the nostrils; lo, Torrid brilliancies thro' the vapours lighten swifter, penetrate them, Fasten merciless, ruminant, hueless, on earth's frame crackling busily. He aloft, the frenzied driver, in the glow of the universe, Like the paling of the dawn-star withers visibly, he aloft: Bitter fury in his aspect, bitter death in the heart of him. Crouch the herds, contract the reptiles, crouch the lions under their paws. White as metal in the furnace are the faces of humankind: Inarticulate creatures of earth, dumb all await the ultimate shock. To the bolt he launched, 'Strike dead, thou,' uttered Zeus, very terrible; 'Perish folly, else 'tis man's fate;' and the bolt flew unerringly. Then the kindler stooped; from the torch-car down the measureless altitudes Leaned his rayless head, relinquished rein and footing, raised not a cry. Like the flower on the river's surface when expanding it vanishes, Gave his limbs to right and left, quenched: and so fell he precipitate, Seen of men as a glad rain-fall, sending coolness yet ere it comes: So he showered above them, shadowed o'er the blue archipelagoes, O'er the silken-shining pastures of the continents and the isles; So descending brought revival to the greenery of our earth. Lither, noisy in the breezes now his sisters shivering weep, By the river flowing smooth out to the vexed sea of Adria, Where he fell, and where they suffered sudden change to the tremulous Ever-wailful trees bemoaning him, a bruised purple cyclamen. NOTES THEODOLINDA. The legend of the Iron Crown of Lombardy, formed of a nail of the true Cross by order of the devout Queen Theodolinda, is well known. In the above dramatic song she is seen passing through one of the higher temptations of the believing Christian. PHAETHON. The Galliambic Measure.